Paul O'Brian's LASH is a puzzler (and not in the sense that it's full of puzzles). It's an intriguing story, well told, and technically it all hangs together well. The writing is strong, and the exploration options wildly diverse--there are lots and lots of endings and different options to explore, and any given player is unlikely to see all the text the game has to offer without the aid of TXD. But for LASH to really work as interactive fiction, it has to resonate emotionally with the player, and unfortunately the nature of the story makes significant emotional impact somewhat unlikely.

The backstory is complicated and intricately done, and the game sets it up nicely. The Second American Civil War has come and gone, and you're picking through the rubble, looking for valuables, via satellite link to your handy robot. The documentation leaves some ambiguity about whether your ostensible aim is historical knowledge rather than simple lucre, but the trajectory of the game tends to shape your character into a looter rather than a historian. (The SCORE function, for instance, tracks your earnings.) At any rate, you're searching through a mansion that dates to before the First American Civil War, and your robot acts as your eyes and ears, to some extent at least. The premise, therefore, is terrific--at least, I thought so. I love reconstructing stories from clues and bits of information, and LASH seemed initially to be taking that path.

It turns out that it doesn't, really; you end up exploring the past, but not in the way I'd expected, and what does happen, for lack of a better way to put it, isn't quite as subtle as pure historical reconstruction might have been. To be sure, the other way might have been unsubtle too, but my main reaction to the way LASH told its story was, okay, I get it, don't yell at me. It's certainly not a bad story, nor is it badly told, and the subject has hardly even been touched on in IF; there's nothing inherently wrong with any of it. But the game throws you so suddenly into the scenes that should affect you that it's easy to become detached from it all--you don't have enough time to get to know the central character before the relevant events begin. It's also clear that the distancing is, to some extent, deliberate; it matches a similar distancing that is going on in the game (arguably, in fact, two of them)--but as well as it works from a theoretical standpoint, it undermines the game's effect on the player. Likewise, there's a sequence toward the end of the game that's cleverly done--subtly, even--and yet, even when the player recognizes what's going on, it's unlikely to pack much of an emotional punch. Appreciation of the author's craft, perhaps, but that's not quite the same.

As noted, LASH offers the player lots to do; some of the puzzles and problems have a significant effect on the outcome, and some don't, though there's not really a single way to "win" as such. Solving certain problems gives your character more money, of course, but it's not really clear that that's an unequivocal good, or sufficiently so that you should be striving for it at the expense of other goals. There's an odd division going on, however, between items and events that are there purely for historical perspective and those that merely represent more money, and it isn't even always clear whether solving the few puzzles there are (most of which are optional) will lead to insight or to riches. The player who's interested in one more than the others may be disappointed, in other words, to find that solving a given puzzle won't advance his chosen goal. To the extent the bifurcation represents a split between the player and the character, it's an interesting division, but it also makes for some awkwardness.

And yet LASH also has a lot going for it. It's thoroughly researched, for one thing; there isn't much IF that could be called historical, but if other authors put as much thought and effort into historical IF as this one did, there's plenty that can be done with the genre. The quality of the research is manifested not so much in the story or characters, which are a mite on the generic side, as in the details of the setting--objects, customs, map layout. When, as here, the reality of the historical scenes depicted is part of the point, it seems all the more important to get things right, and LASH cannot be faulted in that regard. It's also possible to screw up in a variety of interesting ways that shed light on the story; step outside the realistic constraints of your role and you're in trouble. (It's tempting at several moments to do rather unwise things, in other words, things that might seem perfectly appropriate to the generic IF adventurer, and the game reminds you quite forcefully that you're not the generic IF adventurer.) The writing is strong throughout, enough so that the historical setting comes across vividly and the Wishbringer doubled-landscape trick is believable (and highly atmospheric).

LASH is a well-thought-out, polished work of IF that I wanted to like more than I did, sadly; I recognized its good intentions, but I didn't respond as viscerally as I suspect the game wanted me to, and ultimately my experience became more detached appreciation for the author's skill in crafting the technical aspects of the game (which is considerable) than real involvement in what the game was trying to do. In that it's difficult to say categorically that others will share my reactions, I recommend that all fans of good IF give it a shot, but I consider it only a partial success.